Dancing Words Blog

Category: PreK-5 Dance Books

  • The Color Green

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    Exploring COLORS with children is always full of
    possibility, for students in preschool all the way up to eighth grade.

    • Explore all of our associations with a color and
      what in our world is that color
    • Play with props (fabric, ribbons, hoops) of a
      specific color
    • Explore emotions related to each color

    Today, let’s focus on GREEN. Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s
    Caldecott Honor Book, Green, is a
    perfect introduction for a project or activity associated with green. The
    poetic text can also easily translate into a dance – “forest green…sea
    green….slow green….glow green….” Seeger’s book looks at objects, animals, and
    environments that are the color.

    Use Green with
    students in preschool-2nd grade. 

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  • Off We Go!

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    I was excited to stumble upon this book at the library, Jane Yolen's 2000 picture book Off We Go!. Off We Go! will quickly become a well-used book in preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade dance classes. 

    Like Steve Jenkins's book Move!, Off We Go! is a super easy and accessible book for movement inspiration. The various animals in the book tiptoe, hop, dig, and slither. Laurel Molk's illustrations evoke a calm and joyful energy. 

    Dance teachers can use the text as inspiration for an improvisational activity, or teachers can easily create a dance based on the text.

    Young dancers always love animal inspiration. Students will love exploring the movement of spiders, ducks, snakes, and mice.

    Off we go!

     

  • Snowflakes and Symmetry

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    One of my favorite books in my classes this fall (6th-8th grade) is the small photography book Snowflakes, featuring the incredible "micro-photography" of Kenneth Libbrecht. You can purchase new and used copies on amazon.com. 

    There are numerous uses for this book. The book is full of pictures and quotes, not a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Even in this digital age, my students always love having a book in hand and beautiful color images as inspiration. 

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    1. With my 6th grade students, we have an entire "water dance project" in conjunction with the 6th grade science curriculum. One component of the project includes states of water. This book is a great addition to my collection, to use as springboards.

    2. With all of my classes, the book is a great example of symmetry. I am always on the lookout for visual images to use when exploring symmetry and asymmetry in classes.

    3. In my 7th/8th grade dance elective course, we are creating an entire performance around the theme of Winter. We are using these images and embodying them as we make a stop motion film this trimester.

    This book can easily be used in elementary dance classes as well. 

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  • New Book/CD About the Seasons

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    I spotted this book in the window of Mrs. Dalloway's in Berkeley just the other day. It is a great find, just in time for the beginning of Fall.

    Local educator Michael DeWall has created a beautiful book and CD to explore with children in preschool, kindergarten, first, and second grades. Illustrator Sara Kahn has created color-rich watercolors to accompany the lyrics of the songs. In the back of the book you will find the sheet music for these nine original songs as well as a CD.

    The music is definitely "children's music," but I like it a lot. My own children are enjoying listening to it, and I can easily see PreK-2 dance teachers and classroom teachers using it in classes. The music is joyful and a great addition to your music collection about the seasons. The songs explore a variety of themes including: changes, rain, picking berries, and the four seasons.

    Check out Seasons: Rhymes in Time here.

  • Happy Fall! Exploring the Seasons through Dance

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    Happy first day of Fall! If you look at the column on the right on this blog page, you can see the new category "Seasons." Click on it and you will find a variety of books to explore. 

    Happy dancing!

     

  • Alphabet Series: The Letter B

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    When you and your students explore the letter B, some of these books can be springboards and inspiration for improvisations and dance projects. 

    Let's Bounce!

    If you work with preschoolers, bouncing is such a fun action to explore. How can you bounce in place….traveling in the room……with a friend? There are three books to read on bouncing:

    1. Bounce by Doreen Cronin and Scott Menchin

    2. Bouncing Time by Patricia Hubbell and Melissa Sweet

    3. Emily Loves to Bounce by Stephen Michael King

    Bones

    You might talk about the bones of the body, improvise using bone vocabulary, or make a dance or warm up to the spiritual "Dem Bones." Check out….

    Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins

    Dem Bones by Bob Barner

    Butterflies

    As for exploring butterflies or the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, the newer book A Butterfly is Patient, by Dianna Hutts Aston and illustrator Sylvia Long, is a beautiful picture book with movement-evoking larger text on each spread and elegant illustrations.

    Bridges

    Another great B word to try out in the body is building bridges. Whether you explore in partners or small groups, use the book Bridges Are to Cross by Philemon Sturges and artist Giles Laroche. (Find used copies for sale on amazon.com or visit your library.)

    Blue

    To explore the color blue, you can pull out all of your books about colors. Four examples include: My Many Colored Days, Colour, Living Color, and The Rainbow Book. What are our associations with blue? How can we translate these ideas into movement? Ideally, see if you can pull out 3-5 books on color. Look at the blue pages, and then explore movement ideas related to these pages. You can even string the 3-5 ideas together.

    Ballet Books

    Last, as you explore the letter B, there are many books at the local library on ballet. One of my personal favorites is Rachel Isadora's alphabet book On Your Toes: A Ballet ABC. Other great ballet books are Bea at Ballet (also by Rachel Isadora) and Beautiful Ballerina, by Marilyn Nelson with photographs by Susan Kuklin. 

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  • Book to Boogie Blog: Fortunately by Remy Charlip

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    The Book to Boogie Series is another great blog to check out. Here is the recent post that explores a favorite of mine, Fortunately by Remy Charlip.

    Click here.

     

  • Wow! Ocean!

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    I love finding pictures books that can easily create an improv structure. Wow! Ocean! can be explored with preschool students and K-2 students.

    Robert Neubecker's book has sparse text, but dense images of a day at the ocean. The main character, Izzy, heads to the beach one day. With each turn of the page, she explores another aspect of the beach and ocean world – tide pools, shells, fish, sting rays, and coral reefs. There is even a sunken ship.

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    You could set up an improv that could be repeated several times in your dance classes. With each page, the students could be exploring that environment (ex. dancing through a coral reef) or be that environment or animal (ex. move like sharks). Each spread begins with the word "wow" ("Wow! Tide pool!…..Wow! Fish!"). The word "wow" could be the cue for students to pause to get ready to transition to the next idea. 

    Have fun exploring ocean life with this book!

     

  • Magic and Whimsy Series: Questions, Questions

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    How do seeds know how to grow, to reach up from the earth below? Who paints the colors on the flowers that lift their heads to sun and showers? What turns the rain on in the sky and brings the sun to make things dry?

    If this poetic text peeks your interest, read on. Marcus Pfister's 2011 picture book Questions, Questions could be the book you are looking for this fall as you build a class dance with students in grades 3-5. In a similar vain to the Caretakers of Wonder (Cooper Evans), Pfister poses lots of great questions that will lead to interesting movement phrases with upper elementary age students. You can assign some of the pages to small groups, and other pages will lend themselves to whole-group explorations (How many shells are on the shore? How many little fish might see the stone I throw into the sea?).

    You, as the teacher, can be the narrator for the piece. Or, record yourself or the students reading the text.

    Questions, Questions beautifully explores many aspects of the natural world – plants, animals, and weather.

     

     

     

  • This is the Rain

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    I love the theme of water and have explored it in many ways over the past 16 years in dance classes varying from preschool through 7th grade. Students explore the actions of water, the water cycle, forms of water, and more.

    This summer at the library, I found the book This is the Rain by Lola M. Schaefer and illustrator Jane Wattenberg. This is the Rain is a cumulative story, like The House That Jack Built, where the story gets built upon. 

    As for movement inspiration, the book talks about the water cycle and the many forms/states of water. The use of repetition in the text is a great way to explore repetition in your dance class.

    I encourage dance teaching artists, classroom teachers, and science teachers working with students in grades K-3 to check out this book. You can purchase used copies on amazon.com. 

    *Also, please note, I added the category of "water" in the column to the right here. There are numerous books on the theme to explore in elementary dance classes.